Stories

Robt. Drogosch, 321st BG, 447th BS, MTO

DROGOSCH; Shot-Down on the 447th very first Mission; 20 March, 1943 (at Sea)

MISSING IN ACTION on 20 March 1943 on Sea Sweep Mission Between Tunisia and Sicily. Attacked By Enemy Fighters~SHOT DOWN at SEA.

One Crew Member Killed Before the Crash, The 5 Surviving Crew Members Made it to the Life Raft, Rowed to Shore~EVADED ENEMY CAPTURE~Made it to Friendly Lines, Were Treated for MinorInjuries, and RETURNED to the 447th Squadron on 27 March 1943, ALL 5 Were Wearing British Uniforms.

447th BS War Diary: Nine of our planes participated in a raid on Villacidro landing ground in Sardinia today. Bombing results excellent. All our planes returned safely. There was a group meeting in the granary. The Group Commander commended the men for the manner in which they had done their job and presented medals to those who had earned them. Seven of our men received the Purple Heart. They were: Lts. Ackley, Orr and T/Sgt. Drogosch, S/Sgts. Ludtke, Osowiecki, Noble and Perpich.

They were flying No. 4 position of a flight of four ships and were flying it close. Oil was leaking out of the right engine and going back over the wing. They had had a little trouble with it during the attack, but it was working O.K. on the trip home. But the oil on their wing was their ruin. Enemy fighters (ME-109's-yellow nose jobs, indicating Goering's prize squadron) picked Duke's ship as a possible cripple, and concentrated their attack on them. They were doing O.K. in holding off their attackers, Sgt. Noble, the turret gunner shot down one ME-109 and Sgt. Drogosch the radio operator on the waist guns, shot down another. One Nazi, however, paid no attention whatever to the fire power concentrated on him and came boring in in spite of it. He did a good job. His fire raked the ship from one end to the other---a 20 mm shell exploded in the navigator's compartment, tearing things up generally. But other than a few cuts on their hands and faces, did no damage to Duke and Ackley. A string of 20mm shells hit the right engine, going back across the wing towards the fuselage and the tail section. That was the burst that did the dirty work. The engine caught fire and quit. The wheel assembly came down out of the nacelle and hung there. The right wing flaps came down and fell off. The right wing itself was badly shot up and weakened. The tail section was riddled, and Sgt. Govoni, the engineer on the tail gun, was killed. He never knew what hit him.Ackley, James H., 2Lt, pilotDuke, Albert (NMI) "Al", 2Lt, pilot Drogosch, Robert C., T/Sgt, radio-gunnerGovoni, Harold F., S/Sgt, engineer-gunnerNoble, Francis L., S/Sgt, armament-gunner